Bird Words 14: Dystopian NBA all-star game, XFL drama and the MLB is a mess
Very melodramatic week in the sports world.
It was a slow week in the sports world but the NBA gave us an incredible all-star game, we got some XFL hijinx and the MLB is still a mess!
The NBA’s dystopian all-star game was a fun watch
I am not a gigantic NBA fan, and I usually choose to ignore all-star weekend, not watching the NBA at all really until the playoffs come around. This is mainly because the Phoenix Suns are really bad, and we have not had an all-star in who knows how many years. While we will not make the playoffs against this year barring a miracle, Devin Booker managed to sneak into the NBA All-star game as a replacement for the injured Damian Lillard.
This meant I had to watch, and boy am I glad I did. The new format meant that each quarter counted as an individual game, and the winner of each quarter won 100k for a charity of either LeBron James or Giannis Antentokounmpo’s choice. While this seems cool on the surface, it has some pretty scary repercussions.
For example, let's say James’ team dominated the game. The charity attached to Antentokounpo’s team would suddenly be left without the funding they were expecting. Many poor kids in Chicago depend on this funding in order to go to college and one day have a successful career. The idea that hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to these charities are depending on a game that does not really matter feels dystopian.
To make things worse, the kids were there, in the crowd, and the cameras showed them throughout the game. While for spectators, the celebrities in the crowd, and even the players, this was just a fun, dumb, basketball game. Some of these kid’s futures were depending on whether or not James Harden cared enough to play defense.
In the end, team James won but both teams won a few quarters, earning their charity some cash. The whole concept and idea felt disgusting, though. It was like three steps away from the Hunger Games.
The game itself turned out to be great, though. Things got close towards the end, and both teams began to play as if things really mattered for them. It was like watching a real, competitive NBA game, but with the greatest players on the planet. Chris Paul even got feisty at one point and I worried a small brawl may break out.
It ended very anticlimactically, with Anthony Davis winning it on a free throw (he missed the first of two, though, putting his team in a hairy spot). While Booker only played six minutes, he won the biggest game of his career thus far, which is always nice to see.
Matt McGloin got benched for a live interview?
As I wrote about last week, the XFL is doing live interviews and they are very dumb. We got a taste of how they can have negative impacts upon the actual game in Week 2. New York Guardians quarterback Matt McGloin got pulled aside for an interview heading into halftime against the DC Defenders. McGloin told ESPN reporter Dianna Russini that there was a problem with the team’s gameplan. Immediately after, head coach Kevin Gilbride blamed McGloin for the team’s poor first half.
Usually, something like this would not happen. The coach would be the only one interviewed before the half and he would just give a standard “we need to be better” quote then run to the locker room. The XFL created this situation where this tension between coach and quarterback becomes a spectacle.
While this is great for drama, it sucks for the sport. Something that could have been solved privately at the half (which is harder to do as the XFL allows the camera’s into the locker rooms, too) suddenly escalates into two men feeling they need to defend their honor against one another publically.
McGloin threw a pick six to start the second half and was pulled from the game. The Guardians ended up losing 27-0 as their offense was blanked.
The beef spilled over into the postgame, as McGloin mentioned that “there’s a lot of stuff going on behind closed doors.”
Locker room tension is not anything new, and happens often in the NFL. Rarely does it play out this publically. This is horrible and bad for the sport. Bad for all the players (McGloin will now receive a ‘hard to work with’ tag from scouts as he hopes to rejoin the NFL’). And even bad for viewers, as the quality of play suffers due to these tensions being escalated.
Once again, football feels like a sideshow in the XFL.
Rob Manfred is bad at his job
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has made a mess of the Houston Astros cheating scandal. As we have talked about before on here, the Astros were apparently cheating during their 2017 World Series run. The team used cameras in the outfield at their home stadium, linked to a monitor behind the dugout, to film what the opposing catcher was signaling to the pitcher. If the pitcher planned to throw offspeed then they would make a loud bang by hitting a trash can, helping the batter at the plate.
The use of cameras has been confirmed by the league. Allegations about the team having buzzers plugged into the uniforms of Jose Altuve and George Springer could not be proved by the MLB but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that looks like they were using buzzers.
If I was commissioner, key players in this scheme would be suspended for the entire 2020 season, if not outright expelled from the league. Manfred chose not to punish them at all, though, and will not even vacate the Astros title. Despite the league having confirmed a team cheated their way to a World Series, there will be no punishments handed out.
To make matters worse, other teams may bear the brunt of the punishment. Many pitchers will feel cheated by the Astros, and it is possible that some of their bad performances against the Astros have affected the course of their careers. Some pitchers may feel the need to retaliate by pegging Altuve, Springer and other Astros batters. Manfred stated that any pitchers who do so will suffer larger punishments than usual.
While pegging players is bad, the fact the Manfred knows it’s going to happen this far away from the season means he knows something is wrong. Manfred should try to prevent players from being pegged without punishing the pitchers who have been hurt by the Astros.
The way to do this is to ban Altuve and Springer. By not doing this Manfred is making a joke of his league.
What I’ve been watching and playing
I finally got around to seeing Best Picture winner Parasite and it definitely lived up to expectations. It was a very nuanced critique of capitalism and the hierarchies we live in, and how even the people being destroyed by these systems seem to support them for some reason. It was everything Joker wanted to be.
I also started playing Darkest Dungeon the turn based RPG, dungeon crawler, where you are essentially an HR manager for a group of insane treasure hunters you have hired to recover your family heirlooms. It is extremely hard, and not like anything else I have ever played, but still a great, fun, game I would recommend to anyone.
What I wrote this week
An ode to Fort Frolic- Medium
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